Thoreau: His Home, Friends and Books/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE YEARS OF PREPARATION
THERE are few subjects of broad interest in America that have shown more radical changes of view-point during the last half-century than those pertaining to the aims and influence of college education. When Thoreau entered Harvard the older conviction prevailed, that college must be a stepping-stone to some one of "the gentlemanly professions." The broader sentiment of to-day, that college is preparation for life in any vocation,—profession, trade, society, philanthropy, statescraft,—was then but an embryonic and feeble vision of a few minds. The college graduate was expected to swell the ranks of clergy, physicians, lawyers, or, when other chances failed, to become a teacher. Analogous to this tenet regarding the purpose of a college education, was a corresponding fixed code of judgment upon a young man's mentality and promise. To gain recommendation by a faculty he must devote himself to the prescribed texts, often winning greater enconium by "a good memory" of some insignificant passage than by "a good understanding" of the principle involved. In other words, there was a premium on "the dig." Occasionally, some rare, broad-minded professor recognized the true gifts of a boy who seemed indifferent to the requirements but displayed talent in other directions. To-day, even under the most catholic conception of the meaning of college, as a life more than a course, with our generous elective system, we fail to reach the latent ability of many a youth whose rank in the old-time requirements may be low but who has genius in other lines, as later life reveals. The president of a prominent college in New England has recently advocated the extension of the educational period that the student, before his course is finished, may be able both "to find himself" and "to make sure of himself." In contrast, however, with Thoreau's college opportunities seventy years ago, the student now has maximum chances to choose widely, to test and qualify his powers along myriad lines and, at least, "to find himself" and his specific interest.
There is much current defense of the smaller colleges on the ground of the closer relationship there between professor and student. Comparisons are also made between Harvard of sixty years ago, with two hundred students closely watched and encouraged by their thirty professors, and Harvard of to-day, with more than four thousand students and nearly two hundred professors and instructors, where relations must be largely impersonal. Without any discussion of the general argument, it would seem as if the college known to Emerson, Thoreau and Lowell was scarcely noted for this intimate acquaintance or, in fact, for individual insight or foresight. Undoubtedly, Edward Channing, Ticknor, Longfellow, and later, Lowell, as professors, became interested in many students with fine mentality and gave incentive to individual development, yet their examples seem sufficiently rare to be given special reference. Edward Everett Hale, who was graduated from Harvard the year after Thoreau, has given some interesting reminiscences of the class-room atmosphere in "A New England Boyhood" and also in "James Russell Lowell and his Friends." He recalls the favorite and apt term, seminary, usually employed by President Quincy when speaking of the college. In the narrow curriculum, Greek, Latin, and mathematics formed staple products, with "modern language days" three times a week. Of these so-called "voluntaries," a student must choose, at the beginning, German, French, Italian, or Spanish, and maintain his chosen language without change for four terms. As further discouragement to modern " voluntaries," Dr. Hale avers that the "marks" in these studies counted only half the value of classical "merits." He adds;—"Most of the work of the college was then done in rather dreary recitations, such as you might expect in a somewhat mechanical school for boys to-day." College prayers, compulsory twice a day at early dawn and dusk, regardless of the hours of breakfast and supper, formed another feature repellent to many a student of sincere, but liberal, religion. These became "the sins of omission" which caused the "rustication" of Lowell at Concord and the necessary printing, not reading, of the class poem by the "ostracized poet."
A friend of Thoreau, in granting a recent interview, began her delightful memories by saying,—"Henry Thoreau was fifty years in advance of his times." This is a succinct statement for his whole life and was manifested in his college years. Thoreau was not happy nor appreciated at Cambridge. As his later letters indicate, he deplored the lack of studies connected with his particular interest, nature in varied scientific forms. There existed a Natural History Society among the students with rooms in the basement of Massachusetts. According to Dr. Hale's memory, the students supplied the furnishings, and he recalls the bargainings with carpenters rather than the scientific specimens displayed. It was too early for the awakening in science in America which really dated from the coming of Agassiz. In research among old Harvard catalogues, where David Henry Thoreau was entered at Room 32, Hollis, I noted lectures on minerology (sic), chemistry and anatomy for the senior year. In an interesting paper in Harvardiana for 1835, unsigned as were all of those secretive contributions of students, is a plea, entitled "Manual Labor System," denouncing the suggestion of manual work in college and urging outdoor life and study for exercise and education. The writer says;—"The pages of nature are ample enough and the lessons to be drawn from thence instructive enough to employ his highest thoughts and afford him endless subjects for study and reflection." Probably Thoreau never wrote for this college journal but the paper evidences the dawning interest in nature with which he was already inspired. His college studies, however, became a subtle, potent factor in his later authorship. Indifferent to the social and convivial life of the college town, he devoted himself to classic literature, reading assiduously at the well-chosen library of fifty thousand volumes. He afterwards frankly said that the library was the only part of his college training which gave him passing pleasure and lasting good. He became lovingly familiar not alone with Greek and Latin classics but also with the earlier English poets, Chaucer, Gower, Donne, Spenser and Milton. Harvard, during Thoreau's time, was passing through its literary fever. The professors, Ticknor, Bancroft, Sparks, and Channing, recognizing the benefits of literary culture in foreign universities, especially in Germany, brought back to Harvard the germs of a renaissance destined to create the first true American literature. It has been truthfully said that "probably Professor Edward T. Channing trained as many conspicuous authors as all other American instructors put together." Goethe, Carlyle, Tennyson, and Emerson were introduced gradually into literature classes and the students became omnivorous readers, often joining secret societies for the weekly supply of matter thus attainable.
In addition to the literary incentive which Thoreau gained in his Harvard residence, there were sundry minor influences which left traces upon his character. A young man of his temperament, proud, stoical, critical, thoughtful, with a marked independence and lack of affability, however sterling his character, however sensitive his dormant affections, is unlikely to make friends in large numbers among his teachers or classmates. They recalled his eccentricities rather than his abilities. One college acquaintance remembered that Thoreau always wore a dark green coat, "perhaps because the college authorities required black." Thoreau was in no sense gregarious, he was combative rather than affable in general society, his classmates knew him slightly and awakened, as has many a class before and since, to a tardy realization that they had included a true, though unrecognized, genius. He did form, however, a few strong friendships, while he seems to have cherished a proud, delicately concealed, class sentiment. Charles Stearns Wheeler, from Lincoln, near Concord, was one of the most brilliant scholars of this class of 1837. With him Thoreau became associated in many ways; he was an important influence in the later Walden experience. In the Emerson-Carlyle letters, the former refers to this young student who acted as assistant editor of Carlyle's American editions: "Stearns Wheeler is very faithful in his loving labor and has taken a world of pains with the sweetest smile."
The few scattering references to Thoreau's college life in his letters and journals are interesting and suggestive. In "Walden" he questions the economic side of college with a view to its proportionate results. He probably refers to his own secluded experience when he says: "The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as the dervish in the desert." To live economically and yet live, not play life, seems to him the desideratum for the college student. He would have economy applied to practical life;—"Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably." Thoreau's own expenses, about one hundred and eighty-five dollars according to the catalogue of the time, involved careful retrenchments both from his aunts and his own family circle. He must have been precluded thus from certain social privileges even had his nature allured him thither. He also received a small scholarship.
During the winter months of 1835–6, he taught school at Canton, Massachusetts, and here studied German and imbibed Transcendentalism at the home of Rev. Orestes Brownson of Brook Farm fame. In his interesting study of this community, Mr. Lindsay Swift has emphasized many traits of Brownson. He was a zealous social reformer, radical in all ideas of government, labor and religion; a man of broad scholarship and an enthusiasm which too often became pugnacity. Reflecting the teachings of Godwin, Owen and Bentham, he was ever exploiting some new "dissatisfaction," a quality which caused him much unpopularity at Brook Farm. He found final rest in Catholicism. In "The Convert" he has doubtless analyzed his own character with conceit, yet truth;—"I was and am, in my natural disposition, frank, truthful, straightforward, and earnest; and, therefore, have had, and I doubt not shall carry to the grave with me, the reputation of being reckless, ultra, a well-meaning man, perhaps an able man, but so fond of paradoxes and extremes, that he cannot be relied on, and is more likely to injure than serve the cause he espouses." Biographers have been content to merely mention Thoreau's residence at the home of Brownson but it deserves more emphasis. While his practical, balanced mind would reject many extravagances of thought and scheme, indulged by the elder man, yet the young college boy must have been influenced by the radical ideas, constantly instilled, and their roots may have been subtly operative in Thoreau's later disquieting and extreme views on politics and church.
The class of 1837 included some gifted men, among them Richard Henry Dana, John Weiss, Henry Vose, Samuel Treat, Charles Stearns Wheeler, and others. From scattered class records and memorials may be gleaned a few memories of Thoreau by his classmates and one or two personal confessions. Of his yearnings for Concord he wrote in a classbook;—"Immured within the dark but classic walls of a Stoughton or a Hollis, my spirit yearned for the sympathy of my old and almost forgotten friend, Nature." Again, with one of those rare glimpses into his deeply-hidden affections, he wrote,—"Think not that my classmates have no place in my heart,—but that is too sacred a matter even for a class-book." One of the most familiar portraits of Thoreau as a college student has been given by his classmate, John Weiss, the poet-reformer. In an article in The Christian Examiner for July, 1865, he recalls the traits of Thoreau,—his fondness for poetry, his outward coldness, his "moist hand clasp," and the gray-blue eyes always upon the ground, "as his grave Indian stride carried him down to University Hall." Weiss was especially impressed with the complacency which was one of Thoreau's lifelong traits,—"You might as well quarrel with the self-sufficiency of a perfect day in Nature, which makes no effort to conciliate, as with this primitive disposition of his."
During his senior year Thoreau was ill and, doubtless, "his stubborn independence," mingled somewhat with lassitude, caused failure to maintain his usual rank. Reference to this is in a letter from President Quincy to Emerson, quoted in Mr. Sanborn's life of Thoreau. Despite the complaints of his instructors regarding his indifference, his president reiterates his "respect for and interest in him." There seems scanty reason for the hint that the faculty may have "had other grounds for distrust in Thoreau's case," based merely on a surviving letter from his classmate, Peabody,—a characteristic collegian's account of the excitements of those days, riots in the classrooms of lax or unpopular tutors. Peabody would probably recite such frolics in detail to his sick friend, for they formed his "news," but one can scarcely infer that the recipient of the letter "had a mind too ready towards such things to please the learned faculty of Cambridge." No one familiar with Thoreau's traits as boy or man can reconcile complicity in such pranks with his serious, reserved nature. Mr. Weiss distinctly emphasizes the withdrawal of Thoreau from such college adventures: "Thoreau disappeared while our young absurdity held its orgies, stripping shutters from the lower windows of the buildings, dismantling recitation rooms, greeting tutors and professors with a frenzied and groundless indignation which we symbolized by kindling the spoils of sacked premises on the steps. It probably occurred to him that fools might rush in where angels were not in the habit of going. We recollect that he declined to accompany several fools of this description, who rushed late, all in a fine condition of contempt, with Corybantic gestures, into morning prayers,—a college exercise which we are confident was never attended by angels."
A letter from another classmate, James Richardson of Dedham, refers cordially to their friendly relations and Thoreau's absence, a natural inference, from "Mr. Quincy's Levees" and the entertainments of the class. In this letter is also reference to Thoreau's "part" in the "performances" of Commencement. Whatever had been his delinquencies, he regained sufficient rank to have place in the Commencement conference. Significant were his utterances upon the theme, "The Commercial Spirit," at this early time in his life before he had felt the influence of his later philosopher-friends. Emphasizing as his key-note "freedom of thought and action," he urged elevation of purpose and spirit: "Let men, true to their natures, cultivate the moral affections, lead manly and independent lives; let them make riches the means and not the end of existence, and we shall hear no more of the commercial spirit. The sea will not stagnate, the earth will be as green as ever, and the air as pure."
"After college,—what?" was a perplexing question to the young man in Thoreau's time, even as it is to-day. Then the answer was far more restrictive and final. Had financial conditions favored, Thoreau was unfitted for church or medicine. In reading his volumes, one is impressed often by his keen, logical faculty; the suggestion has arisen that his mind, trained and broadened by legal studies, might have achieved brilliant results. His philosophy which opposed existing government and religion, however, had been heralded in college days, and the innate love for poetry and nature, as exclusive enthusiasms, were barriers against concentrated study of law, even if opportunity had offered. Probably Thoreau's name would have been added to that already long list of authors who attempted law to leave it soon for their chosen profession, literature. At that time, however, an author or a naturalist had no sure entrance to public regard nor could he expect any adequate income. "Whatever may have been the family ambitions for Thoreau, he seems to have adopted the profession of brother and sisters, and the year after graduation was seeking a school. Positions did not come and he remained at home to renew his friendships with his loved Concord meadows and woods. He now began his journals. In the first journal, or daybook, are a few laconic items about his life at this time:—"was graduated in 1837; kept town school a fortnight that year; began the big red journal October, 1837; found my first arrow-head, fall of 1837; wrote a lecture (my first) on society, March 14, 1838, and read it before the Lyceum, in the Mason's Hall, April 11, 1838; went to Maine for a school in May, 1838; commenced school in the Parkman House in the summer of that year." ("Familiar Letters," p. 4.)
It was during that fortnight of public school-teaching that the conflict came between his ideas of discipline and those of the school-committee. Again, he declared himself prophet of later ideas on education. It has been asserted that Thoreau's school was visited by a committeeman who discovered that the new teacher did not believe in the ferule as a persuasive and educative medium. Declaring that thus alone could discipline be maintained, the irate visitor demanded that Thoreau should adopt the time-honored custom. Thus reduced to defiant obedience, the teacher feruled several scholars, including the family maid of the Thoreaus, and then, in disgust, resigned his position. One of the pupils, thus favored, still lives in Concord, near the scene of action, the old brick schoolhouse, now Free Mason's Hall.
There seem to have been two possible opportunities for the graduate, in quite opposite geographical sections, during the spring of 1838. A letter from President Quincy suggested a school in Alexandria, Virginia. Dr. Jarvis, a Louisville physician and friend of the Thoreaus, encouraged both John and Henry to come south for schools and they planned such a trip, as some letters testify. The arrangements did not succeed, however, and the second attempt to find a school in Maine also proved futile. Thoreau did not show entire complacency during this season of vexatious waiting. Is there any greater trial for a youth all eager to test his powers against the world? His friend, Henry Vose, then in New York, wrote,—"You envy my happy situation, and mourn over your fate, which compels you to loiter about Concord and grub among clam-shells." In recompense, however, the letter refers to "other sources of enjoyment, among them the fairer portion of the community in Concord." Henry, like his brother and sisters, had part in the social life of the town during these years, walking, boating, and enjoying the evenings of games and music. A visitor to the family wrote,—"At present Mr. Thoreau's four children are at home—all very agreeable young people, with whom I have many pleasant walks."
In July, 1838, Henry Thoreau, after frustrated hopes for schools in west and east, opened a little home-school in the Parkman House, which stood in the triangular space now fronting the Public Library. This was then the home of the Thoreau family. His letters to John, included in Mr. Sanborn's collation, evidence the fact that, for a time after the opening of the school, he was content, even gay and happy. "I am in school from eight to twelve in the morning and from two to four in the afternoon. After that I read a little Greek or English, or, for variety, take a stroll in the fields. We have had no such year for berries this long time; the earth is actually blue with them. High blueberries, three kinds of low, thimble, and raspberries constitute my diet at present. (Take notice,—I only diet between meals.) Among my deeds of charity, I may reckon the picking of a cherry-tree for two helpless single ladies who live under the hill; but, in faith, it was robbing Peter to pay Paul, for while I was exalted in charity towards them, I had no mercy on my own stomach. Be advised, my love for currants continues. . . . I have four scholars and one more engaged." During the next two years the school nourished, and the two brothers became partners, taking their rooms in the old academy building. Undoubtedly, these teachers introduced many progressive ideas in education. One afternoon each week they took their pupils for a walk to learn nature-facts. On another day careful attention was given to composition and the reading of simple classics, in place of the insipid primers and "recitations" so in vogue at that time. The pupils also shared all lectures of importance on literature, history, phrenology, etc., which came to Concord. A boy pupil wrote in a letter, which has been loaned to me,—" Went to a lecture from Mr. Emerson in the evening. It was on literature. I was not at all interested. He is a tall man with piercing blue eyes." Senator Hoar, who was, for a time, one of Thoreau's pupils, has testified to his popularity among the village children. "The boys were all fond of Henry Thoreau. . . . He was very fond of small boys and used to take them out with him in his boat, and make bows and arrows for them, and take part in their games. He liked also to get a number of the little chaps on a Saturday afternoon and go for a long walk in the woods. . . . We used to call him 'Trainer Thoreau,' because the boys called the soldiers 'trainers,' and he had a long, measured stride and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure."
For use in this book there has been loaned a journal of a resident pupil at the Thoreau school. The subtle revelations of the home-life, as well as the studies, afford strong group pictures. Especially, the efficient, cheerful services of Mrs. Thoreau for her family and the pupils stand forth in unconscious, vivid outlines. I quote some excerpts which will require no explanation: "Saturday, to Walden and Goose Pond where we heard a tremendous chirping of frogs. It has been disputed whether the noise was caused by the frogs so we were very curious to know what it was. Mr. Thoreau, however, caught three very small frogs, two of them in the very act of chirping. While bringing them home one of them chirped in his hat. He carried them to Mr. Emerson in a tumbler of water. They chirped there also. On Sunday morning we put them into a barrel with some rain-water in it. He threw in some sticks for them to rest on. They sometimes rested on these sticks; sometimes crawled up the side of the barrel. . . . At night we heard the frogs peeping and on Monday morning they were nowhere to be seen. They had probably 
WALDEN POND
The small sheet of water immortalized by Thoreau crawled out of some hole in the cover of the barrel and made for the river, as Mrs. Thoreau affirmed that when she heard them in the night their voices seemed to recede in that direction." In the same exact and thoughtful tone are records of trips for wild flowers, sweetbriars, or pine knots, practical lessons in anatomy, and ornithology, and share in the cultivation of the garden. The pupils had social pleasures, as well as studies and excursions for specimens. Tea-parties and picnics are mentioned. One interesting entry reads;—"After school Mrs. T., Aunt, Mr. H. T. and I went to Mr. Alcott's. His little girl comes to our school. I had the honor of carrying some yeast in a bottle for Mrs. Alcott." There is careful recital of the food, in true schoolboy style, including a feast of clams in the pupil's room, in which John participated. Very naive is the record of "April 2d. Is Fast Day. We had very inappropriately the best breakfast we have had since I came here, consisting of flapjacks. I went to meeting all day and to an antislavery lecture by Mr. Woodbury in the evening."
In a letter from this same pupil is reference to the boat built by the Thoreau brothers, made famous by "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers." This brief vacation, eagerly planned, was in the late summer of 1839. With the boat built by their own manual skill, and with supplies from their own garden, they were independent and blithe in mood. In "A Week" are sundry allusions to the Concord friends to whom they did not wave farewells,—a characteristic touch of non-conformity. They sounded their gun, however, as a final salute when they had passed from sight. The survey of the late meadow-flowers, polygonum, Gerardia, neotia, ends with a somewhat expanded comment on the "large and conspicuous flowers of the hibiscus, covering the dwarf willows and mingled with the leaves of the grape, and we wished that we could inform one of our friends behind of the locality of this somewhat rare and inaccessible flower before it was too late to pluck it." They did find a messenger and the beautiful, brilliant hibiscus moscheutos came to this friend, Miss Prudence Ward, who, with her mother, visited for many years in Concord, ever welcome guests and friends of Thoreau's aunts and mother. Mrs. Ward was the widow of Colonel Joseph Ward of Revolutionary fame, and to the letters of this mother and daughter this volume is largely indebted for much new material on the home-life of the Thoreau family. The granddaughters of Mrs. Ward now live in Spencer, Massachusetts, in a rare house of historical and literary mementoes. Miss Ward, like the Thoreau family, delighted in botany; she was also an artist of true, innate ability. Among some of her sketches which have been preserved is a fine study in color of this very hibiscus, with its vivid roseate hue. In a letter written during September, 1839, she refers to this excursion of the brothers. In the same letter are these significant sentences;—"I suppose C. told you of the very pleasant visit we had from Ellen. We have also heard from there directly by J. T. J. enjoyed himself very well with Ellen and the boys."
Ingenuous and natural as are these references they illumine a very important incident in the life of Henry Thoreau. There has ever lingered a romantic haze about this period of his manhood; perhaps one may regret that the probing public of to-day has divulged and exposed his heart-secret. The extract from the letter above quoted emphasized the family opinion that John was devoted to this young girl, whose family was closely related to the Thoreaus by ties of friendship, and that Henry's sentiment, if such existed, was completely hidden. Among the detached items in the pupil's journal, already mentioned, is a subtle, intuitive entry,—his discovery of Ellen's initials cut on the red bridge, "between Mr. J. and Mr. H. Thoreau, which bore dates 1830 and 1835." As suggestive, also, is the next boyish sentence,—"Mr. Henry's initials were cut very neatly and deep." Henry's undoubted love for this young girl was noble in its purity and renunciation and it has tinted with its ideal light all his later heart-life, and given rare spirituality to his words upon love and marriage. Mr. Burroughs shows scanty insight into a deep, silent nature like Thoreau's when he says of this self-abnegation,—"It doubtless cost him less effort than the same act would have cost his more human brother." I have seen a photograph of this woman, loved so tenderly by both John and Henry; in later life, the face had retained matchless beauty and serenity. Sophia's letters to her, too sacred to print, witness her affectionate interest in the entire family as long as any member survived. She married a clergyman and lived a happy, quiet life of service to her large family and her parish. She has recently died at a ripe, revered age. May the world be content to hallow the memory and respect the silence of this noble woman!
Emerson once stated that Thoreau's poem, "Sympathy," which appeared in The Dial in 1840, had reference to this loved one under guise of
"a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in virtue's mould."
"Eternity may not the chance repeat;
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
And know that bliss irrevocably gone."
While his romance may have suggested this thought, the explanation of the subject of the poem seems strained and unlikely. Thoreau hated subterfuge in any form and his love-poems were concealed at this time, not printed, in full accord with his temperament. His family, on the contrary, have explained that "the gentle boy" was the brother of Ellen, a lad of eleven years, with refined, noble character, later a resident pupil at the Thoreau school. Henry was deeply interested in the boy but failed to win the cordial friendship given to the less reserved, and more sunny, John. The poem was written after the boy had visited the Thoreau family. His brother George was somewhat envious of the honor paid to his elder companion, so he begged Thoreau to write and dedicate a poem to him. The light, doggerel verses in answer have not appeared in print, save in an English magazine;—the bluebirds that give motive to the stanzas had become identified with the Thoreau home and are referred to in many letters. In any criticism upon these simple verses one must recall that they were designed for a boy of seven years, and belong to the juvenile literature, at that time scanty and prim.
"In the midst of the poplar that stands by our door
We planted a bluebird's box,
And we hoped before the summer was o'er,
A transient pair to coax.
"One warm summer day the bluebirds came,
And lighted on our tree;
But at first the wanderers were not so tame,
But they were afraid of me.
"They seemed to come from the distant south
Just over the Walden Wood,
And skimmed along with open mouth,
Close by where the bellows stood.
******
"Methinks I had never seen them before,
Nor indeed had they seen me;
Till I chanced to stand by our back-door,
And they came to the poplar-tree."
Mingled with the reserve of Thoreau was ever a strong, basal affection and the sentiments of a poet. At this time, when he was twenty-three years old, the heart-sentiment was near the surface and required only cultivation, rather than repression, to cause quite a different development of his entire nature. The years from 1839 to 1842 are very important in the evolution of his emotional and philosophical traits. They were the happiest years of active, buoyant life, they brought him his deepest sentiments and his keenest griefs, and they also gave him direct contact with his most influential friends. His emotional nature seems to have suffered "arrested development" after the experiences of these years. Circumstances, in rapid succession, interfered with the expansion of his happy emotions; other incidents of environment caused a resort to nature and philosophy to aid in the repression and endurance of disappointment; his newmade friends fostered the extreme ideals of transcendental thought on the abstract problems rather than the amenities of life.
Before turning to those later influences, which prepared for his climactic experience at Walden, attention is called to one poem which recorded the memory of his love and suggested the possibilities of gentleness and expansive emotions which a happy issue might have brought into his later life. In the second section of "A Week" the "elastic and crystalline air" brings a reminiscence, followed by the poem generally entitled in collections, "To the Maiden in the East." It has been claimed that the poem was addressed to his friend, Mary Russell, afterwards Mrs. Marston Watson, of Plymouth. Without disputing this personal dedication, one must recognize in the lines a sentiment deeper than friendship. It radiates the romantic fervor of Thoreau during those years when his love awakened and then became submerged. The imagery and melody are preeminent:
"It was a summer eve,
The air did gently heave
While yet a low-hung cloud
Thy eastern skies did shroud;
The lightning's silent gleam,
Startling my drowsy dream,
Seemed like the flash
Under thy dark eyelash.
"Still will I strive to be
As if thou wert with me,
Whatever path I take,
It shall be for thy sake,
Of gentle slope and wide,
As thou wert by my side,
I'll walk with gentle pace,
And choose the smoothest place,
And careful dip the oar,
And shun the winding shore,
And gently steer my boat
Where water-lilies float,
And cardinal-flowers
Stand in their sylvan bowers."
In the extracts from Thoreau's journal, during these years from 1839–1841, are a few subtle references to his disappointments and his manly courage. January 20, 1841, he wrote,—" Disappointments make us conversant with the nobler part of our nature. It will chasten us and prepare us to meet accident on higher ground next time."
As mentioned in the review of John's life, the two brothers enlarged their classes and taught in the Concord Academy from 1839–1841. Though this was a very brief period of the tentative years of Henry Thoreau's life, and it represented all of his direct school-teaching, yet, in a broad sense, his entire influence, widely and subtly extended, was that of a teacher and the trend of his mind was assertive and pedagogical, though rarely pedantic. His aim throughout life was to teach the value and messages of Nature, in her full meaning. The long walks, in which he delighted to include the children of the village no less than of his school, were really matchless lessons in nature-observation. To each individual child he would give some special attention or rouse some specific enthusiasm in flower or habits of bird and insect. Not alone in personal experiment, as a means of teaching, but also in the use of the story, as the most potent educative method, Thoreau was a prophet and example to these later decades. With the insight of a modern pedagogue he realized the need of training the imagination, so largely starved during the first century of American school-life. The children of the Emerson household, and others within his environment, have recalled the marvelous skill with which he would narrate stories from mythology, history and classic poems, or would feed their knowledge and fancy alike by recital of Indian legends and customs. With the true instinct of a teacher he found exhaustless pleasure and profit, throughout life, in the comradeship of young minds, even when their wisest elders offered counter-attractions. Mr. Albee, in his recent "Remembrances of Emerson," recalls the memorable day spent at the Emerson home where Thoreau was an inmate and where he devoted himself during the entire evening to the children and cornpopping.
When Thoreau abandoned teaching in 1841 he accepted an invitation to become one of the Emerson household; he was there from April, 1841 to May, 1843 and again for a year, during the absence of Emerson in England in 1847–8. This arrangement, often misinterpreted, in each case, seems to have been at Mr. Emerson's request, though its benefits to Thoreau were evident. A Concord friend of both families, in recent allusion to the subject, said,—"It was a favor on Thoreau's part to go to Mr. Emerson's home and remain with his family." The relations between the men had become friendly, almost intimate. Emerson found the younger man an inspiration to nature-study and also a practical adviser and assistant. To Carlyle he had already written of this young poet "full of melodies and inventions." Again, he paid him full tribute,—"And he is thus far a great benefactor and physician to me, for he is an indefatigable and skilful laborer." He attended to the business affairs of the household, he supervised and planted the gardens and waste lands, and acted for his host in many matters connected with the editorship of The Dial. All readers of Emerson's journal recall his frank confessions of dismay at tasks of husbandry. Little Waldo's famous comment,—"Papa, I am afraid you will dig your leg," is sufficient commentary upon his lack of skill with garden tools. He enjoyed walks which "cleared and expanded the brain," but he revolted from the patient, slow "stoopings and scrapings and fingerings" which left him "peevish and poor-spirited." In contrast was the light-hearted skill of Thoreau as a gardener.
Further discussion of Thoreau's friendship with the members of the Emerson home will be reserved for the chapter upon his friends but one must note the formative influences of these years of residence as house-inmate in one of the most intellectual and stimulative homes in America. Here he studied and wrote, some of his poems and studies finding a receptacle in The Dial. He also gave occasional lectures and bad part in the Alcott Conferences. In a letter to her husband, Mrs. Emerson mentions one of the Conversations Where, in argument, “Henry was brave and noble; well as I have always liked him, he still grows on me.” Thus, with opportunities for manual exercise among the trees, vines, and flowers that he loved, and with the mental expansion furnished by acquaintance with the poets and philosophers who came to the Emerson home, Thoreau was happy and appreciated. The interchange of services was entirely reciprocal. Dr. Edward Emerson has declared that “ the presence of such a friendly and sturdy inmate as Thoreau was a great comfort.” In the letters of Thoreau to Emerson are many warm and graceful acknowledgments of their kindness, “a gift as free as the sun or the summer, though I have somewhat molested you with my mean acceptance of it.”
A double grief, however, came to Thoreau and Emerson during the Winter of 1842,—an experience which brought at first stultifying despond and later calm acquiescence to Thoreau's soul. In a letter to Mrs. Brown, the sister of Mrs. Emerson, in March,1842, he refers to these joint events of sadness, the deaths of John Thoreau and Waldo Emerson. With tender memory of his brother, he recounts the strange calm brought to him as he listened to a music-box soon after John's death, and recalls the steadfast rotation of the seasons, the songs of the birds and the gentle flow of the river, until he can write with peaceful philosophy, "the everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful if it is not." The letter shows a deep, controlled grief and a groping, yet undaunted, faith suggestive of passages of "In Memoriam." With delicate beauty he says of the death of little Waldo,—"He died as the mist rises from the brook, which the sun will soon dart his ray through. Do not the flowers die every autumn? He had not taken root here." ("Familiar Letters," p. 48.)
Thoreau's ambitions for a future life of authorship, with the necessary leisure to develop and express his thought, had shown early in life and had been fostered by his service on The Dial. An opportunity offered in 1843 for him to tutor the son of Mr. William Emerson, at Castleton, Staten Island. As this arrangement would introduce him to New York litterateurs and editors, he took the position and remained there about six months. His letters record his cordial relations with all the Emerson family but the change did not prove beneficial. Hawthorne mentions in his note-books that one reason for Thoreau's removal to New York was poor health. His last illness had several premonitory symptoms in attacks of bronchitis during these earlier years. In letters, he mentions, briefly as ever, "his tenacious sickness," colds, lethargy, bronchitis. He formed a friendship with Horace Greeley, destined to be of much practical aid later; he also saw and admired the elder Henry James and his stalwart, sincere manhood. It was evident that New York men who met Thoreau regarded him as a representative of the Transcendentalists, in truth, as one of their expert logicians. He had published "Walk to Wachusett" in the Boston Miscellany and a few other articles for which, he wrote, he "was awaiting a shower of shillings." He must have met many discouragements as well as kindnesses from New York publishers in these earlier decades of American literature. He decides, "on the whole, however, it is a very valuable experience." With a droll survey of the few magazines and their contributions "which cost nothing and are worth no more," he adds,—"they say there is a Lady's Companion that pays,—but I could not write anything companionable." He enjoyed the libraries, he studied the crowds, he frequented the shore and interviewed the seamen. It was under this environment that he wrote "The Fisher's Boy," with strong self-revelation and vivid picture, one of the poems deemed worthy, by Mr. Stedman, of a place in his American Anthology:
"My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
As near the ocean's edge as I can go;
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'er reach,
Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.
*******
"I have but few companions on the shore,
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea;
Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er
Is deeper known upon the strand to me.
"The middle sea contains no crimson dulse,
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view;
Along the shore my hand is on the pulse,
And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew."
There are good reasons to believe, from letters sent to Thoreau, that Emerson and Channing, perhaps other friends, expected he would gain some literary work in New York and remain there several years. Perhaps his impatient attitude towards nebulous chances in authorship proved one of the first disappointments to Emerson. Thoreau surely lost faith in future success in New York and returned to Concord in the autumn of 1843. He reiterates in his letters his constant outlook for schools for himself and Helen. None were found and the day-book tells the simple story of the next year,—"Made pencils in 1844; Texas house to August 29, 1850." These two references show that the poet-naturalist spent the year before his Walden experiment in mechanical work, or, as he loved to express the thought, became "Apollo serving Admetus." Especially did his soul revolt at the portion of the story told by Euripides where the lofty-minded Phœbus is condemned to drudge for the selfish, sordid Admetus. It must not be inferred that Thoreau scorned manual work, rather was it a part of his creed, but he yearned for the leisure to develop also the higher faculties; he too had
"The mind of man and all that's made to soar!"
Always skilful and exact in crafts, it is narrated that he once gained a certificate for making the best pencil then produced. He declared that he would make no more, since he had reached perfection, though probably he desisted because he attained to higher ideals for his life. It is significant, however, that he did return to the trade later, whenever the family needs required.
The second entry for this year suggests another fact of interest. "The Texas house," to which the family moved, was built almost entirely by father and son. The name is somewhat mystical; an explanation was recently given to me by an old Concord resident. There was a large white star, near the station, and, as this was the time of agitation over the admission of Texas, "the lone star state," a colloquialism arose giving the name of Texas to that part of the town beyond the significant star.
To this point the life-history of Thoreau seems composed of trivial yet tentative experiences, not unlike those of many young men whose temperament and vicissitudes bring a series of disappointing trials. Conscious of this, he had confronted the query, Should his life become a failure because he could not adapt it to circumstances or, on the other hand, should he create and compel circumstances to satisfy his needs, physical, mental and spiritual? He seemed to face two irreconcilable necessities,—a sufficient income for his physical wants on the one side, and a no less urgent demand for leisure to study and write, to satisfy the intellectual and poetic cravings. Confronting this dilemma, he decided to put to the test one phase of his transcendental philosophy, the simplification of life,—an ideal constantly urged in his earlier letters. The result was the unique development gained from the next two years in the Walden woods.